Archive for April, 2017

Fake news! Beware the wisdom of crowds

If you ask a thousand people to guess the weight of an Easter egg, the average mean guess will be very close to correct. But answers to some questions aren’t so easy to fact check, and sometimes we only get the answers we want to hear. If you Google ‘NASA moon mission’ for example, you’ll see compelling evidence of humanity’s most audacious adventure. But if you Google ‘moon landing hoax’ you’ll see equally compelling evidence that The Eagle didn’t venture beyond Stanley Kubrick’s Californian cinema set. Which do you believe? In this this case, the truth does not – cannot – lie somewhere in the middle.[1] So pick your side. Continue reading →

Discover Nadine Dereza’s Desert Island Disc choices

We’re huge fans of Desert Island Discs at PS Programmes and, to celebrate the 75th Anniversary of the iconic show in 2017, I have been casting away a different member of my team each week to the far-flung shores of the BBC’s mythical desert island, never to be seen again. Well, at least not until our next team meeting.

Before I introduce my final cast away – a recap for anyone not familiar with the Desert Island Discs format. In each episode of the BBC Radio 4 show a guest is invited to choose eight recordings they would most like take with them if they were to find themselves stranded on a desert island. Guests are also given the Complete Works of Shakespeare and either the Bible or another religious or philosophical work. They are then invited to select a third book and one luxury item to take with them. Continue reading →